


hologram gods

by forthelongesttime



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 01:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11658720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthelongesttime/pseuds/forthelongesttime
Summary: “Parrish,” the shadowy figure made an aborted turn towards the one beside him. “I was starting to think you had moved on.” He said it like a question, but didn’t want an answer.“No, still here, Lynch,” Parrish said, a smirk becoming visible and cutting a wickedly sharp line across his face. Lynch swallowed and looked away towards the body. It was unmoving, just as well, as it was dead. “Did’ya miss me?”





	hologram gods

“Parrish,” the shadowy figure made an aborted turn towards the one beside him. “I was starting to think you had moved on.” He said it like a question, but didn’t want an answer.

“No, still here, Lynch,” Parrish said, a smirk becoming visible and cutting a wickedly sharp line across his face. Lynch swallowed and looked away towards the body. It was unmoving, just as well, as it was dead. “Did’ya miss me?”

“No,” said Lynch shortly. He didn’t miss anyone. “I did miss the conversation, though. I’m so glad we talked.” If words were knives Parrish would be as mutilated as the corpse, he felt those words and dangerous sharpness of Lynch’s tone and swayed towards him. He grinned again, feeling his breathing half stutter.

“Me too,” he whispered. They stood quietly, both turning their gaze back to the body.

“Aren’t you going to get rid of it?” asked Lynch suddenly. He made a strange, awkward gesture when he spoke, it drew Parrish’s eyes to his hands and didn’t let go, Parrish swallowed, unable to unsee the movement. He wondered how old Lynch was, absently. 

“How?” he wondered, as though he wasn’t more interested in taking Lynch’s mask off and checking for laughter lines – there wouldn’t be any, he was sure, because Lynch did not seem like the sort to laugh out of enjoyment, but instead out of an inability to express his excited viciousness in any other way, which Parrish wondered if it would leave similar, unkind lines across his features. What would someone like Lynch look like unmasked? – some godlike creature, certainly, because it was difficult to imagine someone like Lynch as anything as fragile as human.

“With your…you know-,” another gesture, this one a quick jab of his hands, “your thing.”

“My thing,” Parrish laughed, because he had never met anyone quite like Lynch before and wasn’t sure what to make of him. He hadn’t been sure when they first met either, but had been able to get by on face offs and snap judgements that had been proven false.

“Shut up,” said Lynch with unintentional viciousness, his voice coloured with a thick layer of uncertainty. “You know what I mean.”

Parrish snorted and closed his eyes, letting Lynch have this one. The forest asked him quietly _why is this man lying there?_ \- and Parrish told the forest to hide him. _What has happened here?_ \- said the forest quietly, the tendrils inching from his hands. There was a short intake of breath to his left, and Parrish allowed himself the small rush of satisfaction, however when he opened his eyes, Lynch’s face was impassive behind the beaked mask he wore and mouth was a thin line, sharp like the blade of a knife. 

“I’ll take this one then,” said Parrish as the green fronds twined themselves around the body. 

“I’m much obliged,” said Lynch in a way that sounded more like, _go fuck yourself_.

“I’ll see you,” said Parrish, and although it wasn’t as potent as Lynch's, his words sounded like garbled version of, _you ungrateful dick_.

They grinned at each other again; wild, uncaged, fearless snarls of aggressive loneliness. There was a caw, and another one a moment later.

“Is that your girlfriend calling?” asked Parrish, to be a dick.

Lynch snarled and hunched over, spreading his large feathered wings. “Nah, she’s too precocious for me.”

“So… not your type then?”

Lynch turned towards Parrish for a moment, the wicked curve of the raven mask’s beak was second only to that of his jaw line, a fierce crest of savage beauty similar to that of a cliff face or sharpened axe. 

Before Parrish had arrived in town, Lynch had done these rounds alone. He seemed to have live here forever, or something of that timespan, and he had treated Parrish like a gnat; irritant and useless, but not so enough to do anything about. They hadn’t seen much of each other, only their traces. A trail of black feathers, smoke, strange and complex creations that Parrish could barely conceive of which melted, slowly, into small pots of lotion, fresh four-leafed clovers and sometimes the barest hint of heavy metal music drifting in the breeze.

Parrish of course, had wondered what kind of powers Lynch possessed. His own had developed slowly, and then all at once – the whispers in his ears turned to a force of terrifying power in one night and he had left the trailer park of his childhood behind. He wondered now if that had been Lynch’s doing, somehow, and then felt stupid.

“I don’t have a type,” said Lynch, his voice went funny like this sometimes, fluctuating between anger and bewilderment in a way that Parrish was helplessly endeared to. He hated that the violence did not repel him as much as it should, but then again, he reminded himself as the vines began to crush the corpse between them into dust, he had no room to judge. He did not always consider it violent, either, simply just. People or monsters could be terrible beyond forgiveness – Parrish was not tasked with forgiving, only disposal. He had offered himself up for this, sacrificed himself for this and could not dishonour his forest. _I am your hands and your eyes_ , he though and a rush of pleasure shot through him as the forest murmured contentedly.

“Really? I would have put you down for someone…strong and silent perhaps?” he could not steady himself in these dangerous waters. “Or perhaps someone with a taste for loud music?”

Lynch gave him a long look, his dark blue eyes inscrutable. “I suppose that would be preferable. Then I wouldn’t have to talk to him.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” said Parrish, forcing away any hint of a blush. 

“Besides, you’re completely wrong,” said Lynch, a rich scope of dryness mixed in with his words. “I’m after a good Catholic boy.”

“Ah,” said Parrish, wondering what he could say to that, wondering if Lynch was being serious, wondering briefly where the nearest church was. 

“Yeah,” said Lynch. “You?”

“Um…agnostic…I guess,” said Parrish lamely. “I…haven’t really thought about it much.”

“I meant,” said Lynch sardonically, “what your type is.”

“I- oh,” said Parrish, flushing and grateful for his own mask, heavy and wooden and itching to ingrain itself onto his face. “I like selfish assholes with bad fashion tastes,” he said, hardly daring to say the words and marvelling when they came out, unwavering, challenging.

Lynch seized him up again, a flicker of something in his eyes, his mouth twitching. “Same,” he said, reaching out briefly and running his fingers up the side of Parrish’s mask where his brow bone would be. The movement seemed contained, almost wistful and Parrish held his breath until Lynch’s hand moved to a safe distance. “I’ll see you around,” said Lynch finally.

“Yeah,” said Parrish.

“And don’t…” Lynch swallowed visibly. “Don’t just disappear like that again.”

Parrish had been sitting his exams, forcing away everything that wasn’t school work. “I won’t,” he said. “Thanks for the hand lotion, by the way. Where did you get it?”

Lynch shot him another ferocious grin. “I dreamt it,” he said with a laugh and then leapt into the night.


End file.
